Hey everyone! Just popping in to let you all know an interesting tidbit about my friend's recent trilogy playthrough.

Just to preface, I was in party chat with him through the entire trilogy, minus the end of 2 and 3. We weren't jabbering the entire time though. He would throw questions my way or ask for advice on a mission every once in awhile but for the most part, he played the game very vanilla-esque and you can bet I didn't reveal anything.

Anyway he played through the trilogy just fine, pretty much Paragon though I explained to him Paragon/Renegade wasn't Good/Evil, just different ways to handle a situation. Only had a slight bump during the Feros colony fight to the Thorian, he was pissed at the whole level and not too concerned with saving the colonists but, to my suprise, he managed to make it through with all survivors, ended ME by killing Saren (twice). Went into ME2 not trusting the Geth, though he didn't mind Legion. Destroyed both the Geth station and the Collector Base.

Now ME3 was where it got fun. Lost Thane to Leng. Almost lost Jack and her students but managed to nudge him to go ahead and do that mission before certain others. Talked down the VS (Williams) had plenty of EMS and War Assets to get any ending he wanted.

Now I mentioned before I wasn't there for his experience from Kronos to Crucible. I don't have any first hand, ground zero thoughts/comments. But I did a one-on-one post game interrogation with him.

As he was describing his ending I became very confused he told me he chose to Destroy the Reapers (Yay!). Yet he was describing the Control ending! (Gasp!)

I pulled up the control ending on Youtube (I don't see it very often) ((Also it's a pain in the dick to find a non-EC ending video)) and began describing what I was watching to confirm it was what he saw. When he said it was, I immediately questioned him as to why he chose Control. I tell you with absolute certainty that he was just as surprised as I was:(paraphrased)"Dude, you picked Control, I'm absolutely sure of it.""What?! No I picked Destroy."*Describe the control ending*"Why'd you pick that one? What made you think it was Destroy?"(NOT PARAPHRASED)"I don't know. It was blue. I thought it was the Paragon choice.

I'm sure you can see why such a statement would set off all my IT alarms. When I first beat ME3 I chose Synthesis (I know, I know) because I thought, this is it. This is the best choice, not because of ideals or because I thought it was right. I did it because this is what I thought gathering all my assets and points was for. My friend chose his ending because he thought it was the right thing to do. Only after finding IT did I realize that Control/Destroy were Para/Rena flips. But now I got to see first hand somebody get duped by it.

His first playthrough was without any DLC, barring the free ME2 stuff, Zaeed and what not. I haven't told him my feelings on the ending or anything about IT, though I'm sure he could draw up some conclusions about my beliefs partly off of my reaction when he told me what's quoted above.

To conclude, he will be doing a second trilogy playthrough at a later date (I'm not forcing him to play any, to play on his own and come up with his own conclusions are highly important to me). He will have all the ME and ME2 DLC on this playthrough, I recommended From Ashes and Leviathan for ME3, it remains to be seen if he will just go ahead and get all dlc for the trilogy. (Dummy shoulda bought the Trilogy bundle) And at the end of that I will introduce him to the Indoctrination Theory.

Regardless of what happens in Mass Effect: Contact, I know this is how our Mass Effect trilogy ended. IT is still alive and kicking guys!

_________________Optimus Prime: Sometimes the paths we wish we desire sometimes have to be fought by words, other than guns. However with the recent events of the Reapers arrival the time for words is over. In order to protect the humans we must stop the Reapers no matter the cost are.

_________________Optimus Prime: Sometimes the paths we wish we desire sometimes have to be fought by words, other than guns. However with the recent events of the Reapers arrival the time for words is over. In order to protect the humans we must stop the Reapers no matter the cost are.

I know I was confused that the Anderson ending was red and the TIM ending was blue. I was extremely confused. I guess I still am. I couldn't believe it when I did it, but I went for the red ending. With my paragon Shep. Still proud of that, hehe.

_________________"A good leader is someone who values the life of his men over the success of the mission, but understands that sometimes the cost of failing a mission is higher than the cost of losing those men." - Anderson

That's quite an interesting experiment. Your brother played through the whole trilogy, exposed to the themes and everyone telling him the Reapers had to be destroyed, and yet he went to control because it was paragon blue ending and didn't realize he'd been duped. It was just an automatic response to the brainwashing of the Red and Blue choice system apparently and did not involve deep thought.

I have a strong feeling this is what Control and Synths actually know in their hearts, that they were duped, but are in the same projected denial they swear we are in. The ones who are true believers of Control and Synth never paid attention to the themes in the first place and only twisted their choice to represent their own world views rather than what Shepard should have done in context.

It is this confusion of meta-gaming, placing your own morals on Shepard at the end of the game rather than what actually makes sense in-character and in-context, that still causes them to believe they are right. Some people cannot play a game and divorce themselves from a character and look at it from a first-person perspective instead of a third-person. They question themselves, " What would I do after experiencing all of this?" rather that what they should really be questioning themselves, " What would Shepard do after experiencing all this?" I believe this meta-transference of the player's ego into the character rather than paying attention to what the character actually should probably do in a game about choice is the problem. They always conveniently forget that with choice comes wrong choices, and with wrong choices comes consequences.

Bioware may not want to alienate player choices, but that's just PR speak. In reality, they are probably still thinking " We just don't want to upset the mob, so we'll give them bread and circuses." and that's what blowing off IT and the Citadel DLC was: Bread and Circuses.

_________________A general is well advisedTo achieve nothing more than his orders:Not to take advantage of his victory.Nor to glory, boast or pride himself;To do what is dictated by necessity,Notbychoice.-Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching